Starblood

the injection a gentle one. Then he turned and was gone, two pair of feet on the floor, the slam of the door, the rattle of the key in the lock. The ritual had, by this time, almost a religious significance.
    Polly moaned, but not unpleasantly.
    Timothy closed his eye and relaxed. There was a light-headedness, followed by a feeling of floating above the bed without benefit of his mobility system. Then the drug thrust him out of that basement room and into a field of bright flowers…
    The Other was waiting. He stood a dozen feet away, his hands in his pockets, eyes staring intensely at Dream Timothy. He was both a welcome and a frightening specter.
    The flowers, this time, did not change into women.
    They swayed in the soft breeze, the odors of them sweet, almost rotten-sweet as they came to him.
    The Other drifted forward.
    Dream Timothy did not make any effort
to
rush forth to meet him, for he was somehow aware that it was not necessary. The meeting about to transpire, the meshing of two into one, was inevitable.
    Closer…
    "They are trying to do to you what the military tried to do so long ago," the Other said. "Do you understand that?" It was the first time he had spoken.
    "I know," Timothy said.
    "They're trying to make you helpless again. It's the way of the world. Governments proceed the same way against subjects, man against man. They want to remove every vestige of self-respect from you and instill in you a doubt of your own abilities and a fuzziness of purpose."
    "I know."
    "They'll never be able to do it again. Not now that we are together," the Other said.
    "I know."
    They meshed. They locked.
    Flowers swayed, wilted, and dissolved.
    The walls of the basement appeared again, permanently this time, and Timothy felt the full weight of the power within his mind as it surged and leaped. The power to do anything he pleased…
    He reached up through the floors of the house, through concrete reinforced with steel rods, through soundproofing, through tangled wires, through floorboards, and sought out the richly thought-filled consciousness of Jon Margle. He found it, skirted the edge of it, getting the feel of the tangle of emotions and desires and plans that beat like thousands of different hearts within that single skull. It had been confusing when only this morning he had merely let himself ride through the cerebral river of the Brother's mind. Now that he wanted to take full control of it, the task was infinitely more difficult. He thought his power was limitless, but he could not be certain—and a battle within another man's mind for control of that mind might very well be a psychologically shattering experience.
    He opened the door, however, and walked in…
    His mind grasped the intangible elements of Jon Margle's mind and forced them into an analogue of something which Timothy could comprehend: a party in a huge house; Margle's mind accepted the form of a house, and his thoughts were the members of the celebration…
    … In the first room, there were two hundred gaily dressed men and women dancing across the glittering onyx floor, while crystal chandeliers twirled overhead, casting marvelous reflections in the polished stone below. Many of them were colorfully clothed in satins and laces of all the brightest hues, the women in low-cut gowns, the men in velveteen suits with flowing capes.
    The chatter of shrill conversation and squealed bursts of laughter was so utterly intense that Timothy could not make out a single word spoken by any of those who were present. There was a roar of noise without any fine delineation between speakers. The dancers moved so swiftly that their faces were nothing more than blurs, and their bodies were flashes of brilliant yellow, emerald, red.
    He crossed the ballroom, stumbling into a great number of people, rebounding, excusing himself. He passed through the archway into a drawing-room where a number of people sat about engaged in conversation, speaking quietly and almost reverently, a totally different group from those engaged in the madness of the ballroom. From there, he went into a long dining-hall that contained an enormous banquet table where one man in a blue and green clown suit sat and nibbled in melancholy fashion at deep purple grapes.
    He spoke to the man.
    He received no reply.
    He continued.
    It seemed that he knew where to go, almost instinctively, to seize control of this house—though he had never attempted anything like this before.
    He found the